


Whiteout

by Magical_Destiny



Category: Fargo (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Character Study, F/M, Revenge, Tragedy, Wrench takes care of business and thinks about what might have been
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 09:35:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11399886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magical_Destiny/pseuds/Magical_Destiny
Summary: Black is the color of absence. But Wes Wrench thinks nothing is emptier than a field of solid white.





	Whiteout

**Author's Note:**

> *channels all my Fargo feels into a sad oneshot* 
> 
> Thanks for betaing,[ mrstater](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mrstater)! And thank you for all the encouragement. <3 (P.S. She wrote an amazing Fargo fic that you can find right [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11399871), featuring Gloria laying Nikki to rest and Nikki/Ray and Nikki/Wrench feels and angst. Good. Stuff.)

_White noise_ is a term Wes Wrench doesn't understand for most of his life. He knows very well that color and sound have nothing to do with one another. He can perceive the one but not the other. 

When he reads the news of Nikki's death, he realizes white noise isn’t a sound at all. His head is full of swirling white, like the thick snow storm that swallowed Grady and never gave him back. The storm behind his eyes almost obscures the headline of the local newspaper he's clutching hard enough to tear.

_Highway Homicide: Trooper and Escaped Prisoner Killed_

He feels the sound he makes, something between a gasp and a groan. There’s a spasm in his throat that might have become a yell if he’d had a voice that would follow his wishes. But there’s no point in yelling. He couldn't hear it anyway. More importantly, neither could she. 

===

In the beginning, they texted back and forth on burner phones. Until finally she texted, _teach me_. He showed her a few signs; she did the rest on her own. She watched videos about signing, silently practicing between meals and plans. In the end, they communicated with a mix of texts and signs and words scribbled on bits of hotel stationery. Their own language complete with shorthand and inside jokes. It was easy, after a while. 

They slept in the same room for months, one never far from the other. His hotel rooms are empty now. Emptier when he’s inside them. 

The newspaper he could never bring himself to throw away migrates to the dashboard of the car he bought with cash from the suitcase she’d given him. The headline is reflected in the windshield when the light is right. 

Time passes and still the article speculates on means and motives for the crime, landing nowhere near the truth. A dead trooper and a dead escaped prisoner. A female prisoner, it emphasizes, killed with a single slug to the head. The bullet matched the gun of the dead trooper at the scene. A shotgun was found beside the escaped prisoner’s body. Assault on a police officer, the articles speculates. A routine traffic stop gone bad because the driver was a wanted woman. 

Cause of death was a clean headshot, which means she didn't suffer. It would've have been over instantaneously, or near enough. One minute pointing a gun, one minute gone past the reach of all bullets.

The prisoner was both victim and perpetrator, the article says. 

Wes’ expressions are almost never pronounced enough for strangers to read, but she would have recognized the quirk of his lips as a smile. He looks up, and his fingers twitch, tempted to sign her a question. 

_Aren't we all?_

===

He finds Emmit Stussy, just as he knew he would. He’s with his family, or the parts of it that matter to him. His brother never had, according to Nikki. 

The sky is a hard, solid white behind the expensive house where Emmit buried his secrets in a brand new life. So easy to let go of the past when you weren’t the one who bled and died. For a certain type of person, anyway. Wes wonders what it might be like to let death roll off your back like so much water, and runs a thumb over the outline of the gun tucked under his jacket. A heavy snow is coming. A few flakes are already drifting past. He slips through the side door he’s been watching and waits to fulfill Nikki’s final mission. 

_All I want is the brother._

He’d never kissed Nikki. At times he’d wanted to, but he knew the raw, ripping pain of loss. Open wounds couldn't be touched. Not for a long time. Especially not if you wanted it to mean something. So he didn’t and she never asked him to. She only asked for his help and he gave it. He wishes there had been more between them than a language half-written, half-signed and a case of money, unwanted by either of them. It’s too late now. Maybe it was always too late. 

The snow is falling in earnest now. Covering the car he’d bought with Nikki’s money. Covering the aged newspaper and its fading headline about her death. 

Grady had died in the snow. He’d loved the snow as a child — they both had. Now Wes blinks out the window and thinks it looks cold and empty. They taught in school that black is the color caused by lack of light. The color of absence. But Wes thinks nothing is emptier than a field of solid white.

Losing Grady felt like losing a limb. Worse, even, because an amputation would have eventually stopped hurting. He’d thought it wouldn't be the same to lose someone else. How could any other loss hurt so much?

But it did. 

He doesn't bother with anyone else now. People smile at him sometimes or try to engage him in conversation. He pretends not to see. Doesn’t bother signalling that he can’t hear them. He doesn't have any limbs left to lose after Nikki.

He'd thought he might be callused against loss, immune to the decay of grief. A stupid thing to think. Nobody can outrun death, least of all the living.

Emmit Stussy walks into his kitchen and doesn’t see Wes waiting by the window, silhouetted in unbroken white.

===

He leaves Emmit Stussy's house, wiping the remaining flecks of blood from his hairline. The drops of red disappear into the black fabric of his pants when he rubs his hands clean against them. Like they were never there at all. Emmit is gone now, like she wanted. He feels himself sigh, breath dissipating in a pale cloud. 

Snow collects around his feet, silent and blank.

Nikki was good with signing. She had fluid and communicative hands. But she didn't sign _goodbye_ when she left for the last time. Just nodded, touched his shoulder, and disappeared. After Nikki, there was no one to mark his movements or actions. No one to text or sign. Emmit's body is the only evidence Wes Wrench was here at all. 

He looks up at the iron sky and raises one hand. _Goodbye_ , he signs at the solid wall of clouds. He turns away from the death behind him and walks into the thickening snowfall until he fades into the white.


End file.
